English instructor doesn’t take the easy path

Juan Espinoza | Guest Writer
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Open a vein. Let the words drip, drip, drip from you to the page. Publish. Repeat.

Over the past 15 years, Steve Cirrone, City College English professor, has spilled enough blood to write six plays, two novels, numerous short stories and several magazine articles.

But enough with the blood. How does Cirrone write? How should you write?

Start with ideas. They have to come from somewhere.

For Cirrone, 40, they come from vivid dreams and titles that come to him on the fly. All of these are written down on scraps of paper and left unorganized for him to find again later.

“It keeps it all a discovery process,” says Cirrone jokingly.

But those are just ideas. How do you write with the ideas you have? Cirrone’s unofficial rules are as follows.

First, don’t be afraid to mimic. This doesn’t mean plagiarize or copy.

Cirrone, who has a doctorate in literature, quotes philosopher John Locke’s idea of tabula rasa or blank slate. We need to expose our minds, our blank slates, to as many different styles as possible to become the best writers.

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Second, be genuine. Don’t sugarcoat your writing and don’t doubt your writing.

Third, write without apology for the way you write and the things you write about.

Fourth, as a writer, you are both a mirror and a lamp.

As a mirror, the writer reflects the world so the reader can see something familiar in the writing. As a lamp, the writer shines a light on the dark parts of the world so the reader can see them better.

Fifth, and most important, take risks. Not physical risks, necessarily. Take risks in style, tone, subject and all of those other literary terms.

“We’ve all heard the cliché that if something were easy, everyone would do it,” Cirrone says. “Writing shouldn’t be easy. It should be dangerous.”

And now to editing.

Good editing takes separating yourself from your writing, says Cirrone.

Let someone read it. Take a creative writing class and have a workshop of your peers read it. And don’t think you can get away with saying that you only write to entertain and none of these rules apply to you.

“Art is one of the most important resources in human society,” says Angela Block, a City College sociology instructor.

Writers here at City College take their art very seriously.

“There are a lot of people in this world cut off from their ability to create through art because they have to eat or work in the fields or the factories,” says Cirrone. “Because I am privileged and I understand that, I feel it is my duty to create.”